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Since then, the restrictions have been progressively reduced. Then earlier this month Victoria’s acting chief health officer, Professor Ben Cowie, recommended that mask mandates should be reinstated for retail and hospitality workers, schools (except students below third grade) and in a couple of other situations.
Cowie said the proposed new orders, as well as more people voluntarily wearing masks, would “directly reduce the number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19.”
It also “strongly” recommended that during the months of July and August, when the pressure on the health system was expected to be at its worst, “people should work from home where it is practical to do so”.“.
This advice, if taken, may mean difficult memories of the dark days of confinement, but it should not be mistaken for a return.
While it’s entirely understandable that people are traumatized by the lockdowns, or fear that a new rule could be the thin end of the wedge, it can’t be too hard to see that the sacrifices being asked of Victorians now are small compared to what we have endured before, when businesses were destroyed, schools were closed and families were separated.
One of the key problems is that early on in the pandemic, much of the public came to believe that public health measures should only go one way and the problem of COVID-19 would do the same.
This idea has never been supported by science, as epidemiologist Tony Blakely explained to me in February, saying that while he supported easing some restrictions on that moment, there needed to be plans to reset measurements if there was a new variant, for example. Maybe it would have been better to explain things like wearing a high quality mask like a winter coat, you can put it on and take it off when needed.
There was a good opportunity to address this gap in public messaging this year, between the Omicron wave in January that brought the health care system to its knees and the current one we’re in now, which could be worse.
More time could have been spent explaining why boosters are so important, why masks work (as well as which ones are best and how to wear them), while also adjusting people’s expectations of what the normality in the midst of a pandemic.
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As others have noted, the issue of the pandemic was largely absent from the federal election campaign. The opposition political parties also needed to be more constructive.
We recently learned that Victoria’s new Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas chose to reject public health advice and make no changes to mask mandates, saying it was “not the most effective way to get the message across ” and “we need to empower Victorians to make their own decisions”.
Epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett agrees with that decision, saying that while masks work, there is no “good science” that mandates will cause more people to wear them now.
When dealing with a highly infectious disease, it is always the case that the individual decisions we make will affect other people. Devastated frontline health workers have been reporting dire conditions for months. Things have been so dire that calls to triple zero have gone unanswered.
At the park, the kids still loved watching the trains and trucks go by. Credit: Aisha Dow
You might think none of this matters. After all, the more than 11,100 Australians who have died so far are mostly of retirement age or older, and it might not be you. But you should also hope that you won’t be one of the hundreds of thousands of Australian doctors who say they could have long-term symptoms of COVID in the coming months, or that you won’t suddenly find yourself in need of emergency care.
I can almost guarantee we will never go back to the wretched park, it has had it’s time and place. But I can still remember where we came from when I choose to make small sacrifices that can help stop the spread of COVID-19.